I don't mean in a fantasy superhero way, but in terms of resources. If someone told you that you now had the resources to attempt to make one thing happen in the world, one real thing, what would that be?

What is the lifetime length of a well made mechanical keyboard? I have probably not had a keyboard that lasted more than two years in about 20 that Ive been using them (Im 25), and some of them were quite expensive. I dont smash them on the desk when Im angry they just wear out.

The keypad is useless in a coding keyboard, and forces the hand to shift right too much to reach the mouse, stressing the arm. Or, to not stress the arm, it forces the hands on the keyboard to be out of alignment (and makes it harder to align by sight, since it’s longer on one side than the other).

I love my das keyboard, and I really love cherry switches, but the keypad needs to die.

Half of my brain is mad with the desire. But the other half has to ask: don’t scissor-switch keyboards possess (nearly) all of the advantages of mechanical switch keyboards, with none of the typewriter-mimicking physicality and noise?

And if that’s the case, wasn’t the perfect keyboard designed several years ago, and hasn’t it been quietly available for sale at every big-box computer store all of this time?

Oh boy! I have dreamed about creating a keyboard for programmers (and hacked open a good many of them and monkeyed with their traces). Is this one easy to remap? The thing I really want, in addition to the sweet mechanical action, is to relocate the braces and semi-colon so that they’re under my powerful fingers. The majority of my wrist and hand pain is due to pinky-finger cross stretch, and with IntelliSense and ReSharper, I type a lot more “weird” keys than letters.

Man, now I’m just dreaming: A keyboard that, like VIM’s insert and normal modes, easily switched the keymap between Coding and Human. 'Cause, y’know, even the best of us has to write the occasional email.

Looks very nice and well thought-out. I don’t really need any more keyboards, and I’ve yet to pay $150 for one, but it is really tempting, especially since I don’t have any keyboards with Cherry clears.

The one concern I have about the backplate is noise. How much echo does the board have?

To everyone who asks for wireless: I can understand why people want wireless mice (it’s nice not to have a cable on something you move all the time, but if it’s long enough it’s not a big issue) I think wireless keyboards have only disadvantages: Batteries which like to die right when it’s most inconvenient (while a key is pressed and thus the systems keeps repeating it since it’s never released until you insert new batteries), the cable wouldn’t be a problem in most cases, stuff like LED backlight would use up a lot of battery, bluetooth is not just plug&play (ever tried to change something in your BIOS using a BT keyboard), …

I’ve seen many mechanical keyboards like this, such as Das Keyboard and a few other vendors. (look for gaming keyboards) honestly though every mechanical keyboard I’ve tried has hurt my hands. I’m still in love with my logitech G15, tried to buy a newer version and it’s just crap. I haven’t actually tried blue switches yet, I probably should, but red, and brown switches both caused pain. Also I would think the ideal programming keyboard would be more ergonomic. Numpad is a waste of space.

Not ergonomic? How could you possibly write software on a keyboard all day without the ergonomic layout? I’m amazed, this seems like a lot of effort put into something that still doesn’t improve on my 10 year old Logitech…

I can do without wireless in a pinch (battery life is not an issue at all), I might even be tempted to pay the exorbitant shipping fee to Aus, but if it’s not an ergonomic layout it’s not a coding keyboard.

This keyboard looks pretty good, funny that you posted this Jeff as it was just yesterday that I immersed myself in the world of mechanical keyboards to replace my default Apple chiclets-on-a-washboard excuse of a keyboard (and to lift the weight off my poor weary fingers). Are the key sizes standard WASD keys? ie. if I order custom or replacement keys for the blank Windows key for example, is this doable via WASD?

Also to shana complaining about it being a full-width keyboard, if you go to the WASD site and click on the CODE keyboard page, you will find that the keyboard comes in two sizes – 104 and 87 key.